I think the speed of landing that a megaloop gives makes it a riskier trick than a board off rotation if you consider the risk being how much damage you can get if it goes wrong. If you screw up a board off then you can come in and slow your decent with the kite still, on a megaloop your just going to skim and slam.

Toby you must be trolling..... Although any trick in those conditions is risky any hooked in board off, is low on the totem pole of risk .....sure it may be very difficult to land...but what happens if you eat it.

a) you throw the board
b) you pick your feet up
c) you pull in on the bar to soften the landing.
d) you skip across the water on your back/ass.

The most likley risk would be that the board might hit you on the head. Or possibly a water enema.

a simple boost in boots has more risk.

what happens when you eat it on an unhooked kite loop it a pair of boots,
1) the bar is gone,
2) you drop like a stone
3) you hit the water with the force of a detonating depth charge.
4) when your board catches on something all your horizontal speed is converted to body slamming your head and chest into the water.
5) you leave in an ambulance.

I don't think boots should contribute to the risk scoring.
But a roll+board off combo is not terribly risky.Especially compared to what was thrown down out there.

Massive credit to all the riders, great event, conditions were just savage and there was a lot of amazing stuff thrown down.

The megaloop is obviously more risky from an injury standpoint. But its pretty safe from a scoring standpoint. Particularly for dudes who are in boots. All they need to do is loop and landing it maybe with a rotation thrown in. They don't even need to worry about the board falling off.

The likely hood of loosing the board is pretty high with the board offs. If you loose a board 10+ meters in the air you will be dragging for ages or blasting back to the beach to grab another board.

A normal boardoff for sure is not that risky (risky to not land the trick, yes), but with rotation it is a different game. Normally the kite will fly forward giving you forward speed...I know this, and fear it, happens also on a slow 18!

can't really compare the risk of the board offs, megaloops, KGB and such unless you can do all the moves. What do spectators know? That said I think it's a great interview question for Kevin Langeree, one of the few kiteboarders in the world right now that could possibly do both a megaloop KGB a megaloop board off and a one footer megaloop with rotation.

A normal boardoff for sure is not that risky (risky to not land the trick, yes), but with rotation it is a different game.

No it's not! It's just an added twist. Unhooking and passing the bar is a different game entirely.

You do plenty of boardoff rotations, but don't do ANY kite loops or passes. Your also pretty risk averse. That illustrates the relative risk right there. No hooked in moves carry more risk than even a straight kite loop, or handle pass. Combine them and the discrepancy just gets bigger.

Risk IS in relation to your wellbeing, not your score! Lewis Crathern and Lasse Walker were not taken away on stretchers for low scores.

Kevin for sure went big, traveled the farthest in the air and tweaked out his one footers, and put into the perspective of the judging criteria it put him third. The other two were unhooking and passing. That simply outweighs taking off your board. Even a board off with a loop will not set the bar as high as what Hadlow and Richman have already done. Namely a bar pass with a loop. Hadlow taking it to the next level by doing it inverted.

Degree of difficulty will continue to progress and we will see double passes with kite loops soon enough.

I would choose to do a big kiteloop - mind you when it started really cranking i wouldnt have been too comfortable - was nuking for a short while there! It's a different sport in these winds.
My ankles are ruined from kloops, but my hardest crashes ever - multi rotations in super high winds on smaller faster kites - disorientation to accelerated landing on back from high up = cant breath ribs fail.

But to me boosting unhooked - passing 40 foot high = winner - insane!

Kite design is a big factor in all this - some of those kites are sooo much easier to kiteloop... and those same fast kites are more difficult to do spins and stuff with because they are soooo fast and have way less margin for error.

Gutted for marc - whatever happened to his kite.. , we ride in these crazy conditions a lot, plenty of practice - was gonna win in my book.. well on the day it didnt happen.

enjoyed all that except "are they still alive" moment!

I still think there should be a hooked in only comp - would be super fun. For KOTA though like i said unhooked loops with passes - WINNER!

I wouldn't ride bindings when it was super cranking like this - a few were back to footstraps - makes sense...